Lviv (Ukraine): Ukraine's military said Thursday that it recaptured some areas in the south and repelled Russian attacks in the east, as a bloody battle raged at a steel mill in Mariupol where Ukrainian troops are holed up in tunnels and bunkers fending off a Russian onslaught.
Ten weeks into a devastating war, Ukrainian and Russian forces are fighting village by village, as Moscow struggles to gain momentum in the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas. Russia switched its focus to that region where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces for years after a stiffer than expected resistance bogged its troops down and thwarted its initial goal of overrunning the capital.
In addition to heavy shelling of the Donbas, Russian forces also kept up their bombardment of railroad stations and other supply-line targets across the country part of an effort to disrupt the supply of Western arms, which have been critical to Ukraine's defense.
Ukrainian forces said Thursday they made some gains on the border of the southern regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv and repelled 11 Russian attacks in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas.
Five people were killed and at least 25 more wounded in shelling of cities in the Donbas over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said. The attacks damaged houses and a school as well.
Air raid sirens sounded in cities across the country on Wednesday night, while Russian attacks were reported near Kyiv, the capital; in Cherkasy and Dnipro in central Ukraine; and in Zaporizhzhia in the southeast. In Dnipro, authorities said a rail facility was hit following several earlier attacks on railway stations across the country. The sirens sounded anew early Thursday in the western city of Lviv, which has been a gateway for western arms and served as a relative safe haven for people fleeing fighting farther east.
An assessment by the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Russian forces were struggling to gain traction.
Ukrainian defenses have largely stalled Russian advances in eastern Ukraine, it said late Wednesday.